Road bill's WAM U-turn

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but that's never the route for any legislation in Pennsylvania, much less for a multibillion-dollar transportation spending bill.

Successive state administrations have well-documented the need for additional highway, bridge and mass-transit funding across the commonwealth. The state has more structurally deficient bridges than any other state, nearly 4,500, and about 9,000 miles of state-maintained roads in need of major repairs.

That demonstrated need, however, was not enough to convince state lawmakers to pass a new transportation bill that will increase transportation infrastructure and mass transit funding by $2.3 billion a year. In the end the bill was a road map for the return of "walking-around money." Under that infamous pork program, legislative leaders bought the loyalty of the rank-and-file by doling out money to the lawmakers for their pet projects in their home districts.

After the new transportation bill failed in the House, it was revived for a second vote and passed. As it turns out, the bill includes $60 million a year for the new version of walking-around money.

To be sure, the new version is an improvement over the old because it at least includes a modicum of transparency in the form of a middleman. Funds will be controlled by the Commonwealth Financing Authority. But the authority's structure effectively returns true control of the money to the four leaders of the Democratic and Republican caucuses in the House and Senate.

All four legislative appointees to the authority must agree for spending on an particular project to be approved. That, in effect, provides veto power to each of the four legislative leaders and enormous political leverage in determining how the $60 million is distributed.

No one among the legislative leaders is a transportation engineer, but they are political experts who know where the money will do the most good in that realm. Since the objective is supposed to be better transportation, the spending would better be controlled by the transportation professionals at PennDOT.

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